I read Leviathan Wakes

This week's novel is Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey.

I'd heard good things about The Expanse TV show, but at first, I didn't have access to it.  Recently someone told me that the first couple seasons were on Amazon Prime, and I settled in to watch it.  It might be a combination of my TV, my air conditioner, and the dialects that the characters have, but I can not hear a single word anyone is saying on that show.  I turned the first couple episode up really loud and then I turned on the subtitles for the third episode, and then I realized that I didn't know anyone's name or what they were talking about, and if I was going to read the whole thing, I might as well track down the book.  So thanks, Chicago Public Library!

In the future, a large portion of the solar system has been colonized, with Earth and Mars in an uneasy peace and people from the asteroid belt treated like second class citizens and reliant on Earth and Mars for resources.  Detective Miller of Ceres is given a case of tracking down a girl named Julie, who has been hanging around with asteroid belt rebels, and whose rich dad wants her kidnapped and shipped back to Earth.  Turns out Julie's ship was attacked in transit and the wreckage was found by a water tanker, which was promptly nuked by a stealth ship using technology from Mars.  This sets off events that lead to armed conflict between the belt, Mars, and Earth, and through it all, Miller is trying to find Julie.

I get why this was made into a TV show.  There are about a dozen set-piece action sequences, where a ship explodes or a riot happens or there's a space battle or they have to escape through a platoon of marines or zombies attack.  It's a little exhausting to read in large chunks, but if you take a break after every episode, it's fun, even when you know there's still 15% of the book left and at least two more horrible things are going to happen.

I like how long the space travel takes.  A couple of weeks pass between destinations, which feels genuine to the massive distances while at the same time putting us in the future where those distances are possible.  It doesn't make traveling too easy, often emphasizing that if they're accelerating at 3 g, it means they spend the trip strapped in.  The book does a good job of not dwelling on the boring transits while still conveying that time has passed.

I also just really like stories where colonizers on Mars end up fighting with Earth.  I think it's the residual love for Babylon 5 that will never wash off.

I realized a little way into this book that it was written by a white dude, and I haven't read a book written by a white dude in a while.  Parts of it felt a jarring after not experiencing them in a while, and I find it refreshing to think about how I could go so long without reading a book by a white guy that that could happen.  There really isn't anything wrong with it, it's just that the two point of view characters are both men, and there are scant few female characters, and there is an awful lot of talk about balls.  Having balls in high gs sounds awful.  Thanks, book, for drawing this to my attention.  That kind of detail probably wouldn't make it into a book written by a woman, and that's why representation is important.

***

Next week: a book not written by a dude.  The Power, sci-fi where women take over the world, by Naomi Alderman.